Tavlo's blog

Continued from...

"It's written in Darnassian."

My eyes widened as they caught sight of the words unfolding from Flamefist's letter.  Not written in my sister's hand, either; no, he had translated his thoughts, perhaps asking for her clarification here and there, but the entire letter was written in our mother tongue.  I glanced to Suldrae; she remained curled in her defensive cocoon, breathing deeply.  I wondered if I should continue, running the risk of her exploding from her huddle to silence the words. I had not forgotten her keen appraisal of me when I had first approached.  The long knives still hung at her sides.

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"I care, you know," she said, raising her face from her arms to wipe her eyes with the backs of her hands, silvery streaks on pale skin.  Her sobs had settled to a mere tremble in her breath, but beneath my hand her body still quivered, like a wounded deer.  I settled myself beside her, to listen if she would speak.

"I care about all of them. I see a woman with some need in her eyes... some deep emptiness, or perhaps a shallow curiosity... and I invite her in. Simply invite, with no expectations but to see that need fufilled. To see... happiness.  Do you know what happiness alone can do?  Just a touch, an exchange, and an entire life changes."

Suldrae's eyes never met mine as she choked her confessional, but I did not doubt her sincerity.  Her beatific vision, however - I moved my hand to the packet of letters and quietly withdrew the small, perfumed envelope, the lady's handwriting looping and twirling in the firelight.  I held it up to her.  The thumb and forefinger of the hand holding the radio device closed upon one corner, her eyes resting heavily on the calligraphy.

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At the rowdy Goldshire tavern, I had described her: a tall, pale, female kaldorei with a deep violet tattoo across her eyes and white hair.  No one had seen her in weeks.  In placid Lakeshire, the innkeeper had recognized the name Suldrae Redwing, mentioning a man from Redridge was also looking for her.  I had moved on to Duskwood, under the grim dark trees.  At the tumbledown hostel there, the master of the house nodded and tossed into my hands a bundle of mail.  She went into the woods to the North two days ago, well supplied, he said.  This mail came for her since; if you are going to find her, can you deliver it? 

As I turned to the dark forest, I read over the addresses before the weak lamplight dwindled behind me. Two packets bore the stamps of the Stormwind Auction House. One small envelope reeked of perfume, marked with a lady's fine calligraphy.  The last, sturdy, square and sealed with wax, displayed a bold familiar hand, Flamefist's mark, as well as his name, Amara Niall.  I stared curiously at the last, but tucked them all safely into my jerkin before heading off into the wood.

"She left," Arasminna said.  "There was a... disagreement."

She didn't look to me. I leaned in the doorway of the bedroom, my arms crossed, eyes taking in the pink walls, pink doorframe, pink wainscoting, little pink rosepetals curled and drying on creamy-pink floorboards.  My sister stood to the side, packing small items into a box, her hands moving so quickly I could not see what she took away from the top of the chest of drawers. I had stopped by the apartment in hopes of seeing the pink room she had described during our last meeting. I had found her alone, closed, quiet, relentlessly busy.  This was another person entirely than the one who had laughed and smiled just three nights before. This was the sister I had known for so many years.  Only in my youth had I seen her as happy as she had been, telling me of her new lover.

Now, the new lover was gone.

I went to Stormwind for roses.  The early Alterac frosts had withered those I planted outside House deWynter, the last blooms dropping petal after petal.  Stormwind always has fresh roses, and a beautiful variety.  Cassie deserves roses every day of the year.

We have no certain date or time to call our anniversary, but we both remember the music and festivities of Brewfest ringing around certain words that could not be unsaid.  No, the brews of the season were not involved.  Our exchanges are clear in memory, if not in exact time.  For the day, for the week, for the month, I will bring her roses. Red ones. White ones. Black ones hinted with the deep violet of her soul.

The letters are written in a hand obviously new to human script, though the words are drawn out with great care and clarity.  Each stroke of ink is dark and purposeful.  The signature, though legible, appears almost as if in another language.  Sent throughout Alterac, the letters find their way into every sheriff's office, Alliance or House Guard post, and noble's house.

To the Guardians and Protectors of the Lands and Estates of Alterac,

I shift in the saddle, five miles from Warsong Hold. Dusk lowers his head, the slip and clatter of his barding ringing in the Borean stillness, as he seeks rare fodder among the lichens. The wind is sharp and relentless along my right side, blowing down from the North.  As I sit waiting, it reminds me.

This is my first return to Northrend since that night.  The cold wind feels both fresh and familiar, ruffling the fur of my cloak's collar and seeping through the layers of my clothing.  I am wearing leathers beneath the warm hide on my back, and carrying only my axe and my crossbow.  I have not come here to make war.  The war is over.

The war is over.

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Tavlo's entry for the "Time of Day" writing exercise, found here: http://www.rp-haven.com/forum/workshops/writing_workshop_0

Morning sunlight pierced the marketplace, shining brightly between the tented stalls and throwing long shadows from their colorful canopies.  Birdsong still mingled with the preparations of sellers sorting their wares, and calm conversation rising from early shoppers.  On some corner, a street performer began playing a lute, the notes rising clear in the fresh air, accompanied by a gentle uplifted voice.

The cold pervades everything here: The air that snaps at our lips as we breathe, the bright clattering of weaponry and armor, the low rumble of crunching ice beneath our feet.  The spire is brittle and threatens us with its tenuous surface; if our boot-heels catch the edge, shards break away, whirling down into darkness.  It would have us fall, tumble away from the icy throne and the evil we seek to destroy.  But we cannot fall.  We will not fall.

He will not fall.  Melersian Corinth is one with the abyss, despite the voice of amusement often rising from behind his mask.  How much is he still human?  He will not fall.

She will not fall.  Beisel Goldthread sets a dwarven table, feeds us with laughter, then disperses in a puff of shadow.  How can a shadow be smashed or broken?  She will not fall.

The bells at the wooden dock ring in the evening, sounding between tall pines.  A ship is arriving, sails dark against the evening sky.  Night is falling on Azuremyst.  I collect my things from where I stand on the shore.

This was the ship I arrived on, years ago now, when I left Darnassus a soft woman in a green robe who could no longer stand waiting for the world to change.  She came here to this place where helpful hands are eagerly guided, where calm direction will train the swing of a sword, where death and violence is such a way of life it is approached with meditative calm.  The draenei, scattered across these islands by the destruction of their ship, were broken, wounded, wrecked, but their divine spirits unchanged.  They put me to a purpose that I grasped tight with both hands.  But I was not like them.

I touch the little cut on my neck, the least wound I have received in months.  Half of an inch long, it appears as a mere translucent line across my skin, hardly opening any chasm to flesh beneath.  It does not require a bandage.  I smear a thin salve over the incision; it will probably close by nightfall.

The assassin's sharp knife had hardly nicked my skin, not nearly deep enough to grant his poison's passage into my bloodstream.  His attack had been awkward, thrusting between my neck and my heavy shoulder-armor, having to leap for my height, grabbing my hair with his unarmed hand in an attempt to pull me back and down while slicing deep and true.  He could have cut my throat; he could have left me bleeding out and poisoned on the lawn.  He could have killed me, no more than ten steps from the entrance to my home. 

I let bowstring loosen, abandoned weapons. The sporebat lingered in the fresh spring night.

I shed my armor upon entering, death and plague left behind.

I went upstairs, my hair at my shoulders, every step one step closer.

I took her in my arms and lifted her up.

One step closer.

The Professor had fallen.

It is Monday morning. I go out from the House for a run.

Rain had come to Alterac over the weekend and melted much of the snow.  Water now lay in thin transparent pools in every low spot of the ground; my feet splash through them, wet leaves and dead grass clinging to my bare skin.  Each cold kiss of the forest drives me onward through the mist and fog. Where the snow still grips my ankles I grin a little, quickly escaping winter's grasp.  Though it is a gray world of barren trees and browned land, the rising water bodes of spring and the turning of the seasons.  

It is the middle of the week.  It is time to prepare.

I entered through the back door.  The maid's face, when she saw me, fell open like a sheet to a gale-force wind.  I found my voice, caught in my throat as it was, and rasped out hoarse words.

“Tell the lady of the house I am home.  Tell her not to come down.  I will see her in the morning.”

The maid nodded, her eyes still wide and fixed upon me, her mouth a thin line.  She turned away swiftly.  If she spoke words from the place of her expression, Cassie would know not to come down. 

I did not prop my polearm against the wall, or set my bow where I usually did.  I did not touch anything.  Another maid and a houseboy came into the pantry, their faces as wan and eyes as wide as the maid before them. I stood without moving.

“I need three vats of hot water.  One with lye, one with vinegar, one with soaps.  I need a pitcher of warm oil and one of boiling water, crushed icecap in each.  A fire in my den.  Many hot stones.  Many towels.  Many -”  My rough voice broke, and I swallowed back the interruption.  “Chamber pots.  Many of them.” 

I scatter bones in Icecrown. I must. They must be broken and they must be scattered, as much as possible. It had been a skeleton of a man or an elf or an orc... I had not looked closely when with a gasping howl it had attacked. It had been Scourge, I had dispatched it, and now I scatter the bones. Among them, clinging to the small bones of the hands and wrist, or twisted around a vertebrae, I often find little reminders of a shadowed past. Rings, trinkets, talismans. I found a rotting leather pouch once that broke open at the touch of my boot; teeth fell out, little whisps of hair, another bone, whiter than those here, untouched by the pervading evil of the Scourge. They scattered into the dust and snow and were whirled away by the wind. Lost in Icecrown, as the Lich King's cold hand must sweep away all such things.

AN ORC!

After bones were shattered, whispers silenced, airships driven back into the frigid dark -

One orc alone barred our way.

ONE ORC.

Slayers of our trees, murderers of our gods, minions of the last great evil...

They wonder why we fight the Horde even here.

Last night, she had to tie me down.

Cassie raised her head as I entered the room. In an instant, she was clambering from where she had curled herself in the armchair to reach for me, and in two steps I had her in my arms. I kissed her like I had been away for years. I had thought my lips would never be so warm again.

 She broke the spell.

Snowfall makes a sound few hear. There is a shiver in the tall pines, a whispering shift of white ice crystal against hard green needles. Each falling flake amplifies the echo of that which came before, and the sound piles, as snow piles, an auditory vision. Snowfall seems weightless, soundless. It has weight. It has sound. It is, in the still of morning, white noise.

Recent events have caught up with Tavlo'ashmalan Moonsong. She is learning humility.

I tell myself this as I stand before the wall, windswept charcoal still clinging to heat on the baked earth, where here and there inexplicable flowers grow. I step through the skeletons, twisted charred bodies lying open-mouthed, the remains of their arms and armor a crushing weight. I would have been one of them, if I could have been. I should have been, my sword pointed Northward still towards the final goal, even in death.

My hand lifts from the water. Cold and clear, it drips from my fingers, rippling the surface, shattering my reflection. I watch; I breathe. My face comes into focus again.

(Image after the break)

The limbs of trees, clinging to the last gold leaves of autumn, lash out at my bare skin as I run. Encouragement or punishment? I snarl at them, eyes narrowed, and run faster.

My mind races.

Morning breaks on the Fjords. In some places of the world, morning creeps up quietly through misted trees, or rolls like a tide of gold over open land. Morning rises. Morning wakes. Here, on the Fjords, morning breaks.

It was said among my people before our immortality was sacrificed, “We are ever-bound to the turning gyre.” When life has no end it must still be marked, and so we traveled the seasons in cycles of our own. Each of us, we were taught, walks the path of a circle, and throughout our lives we will walk the circle again and again.

(Full image under the break)